Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official eBook

3. The text refers to what was known as the ‘customs
hedge’. Before the establishment of the
British supremacy each of the innumerable native jurisdictions
levied transit duties on many kinds of goods at each
of its frontiers, to the infinite vexation of traders.
Such duties were gradually abolished in British territory,
and few, if any, are now enforced by native states.
Salt cannot be manufactured in British India without
a licence, and the Salt (formerly called Inland Customs)
Department is charged with the duty of preventing the
manufacture or sale of illicit salt. In its later
developments the Customs hedge was used for the collection
of the salt duty only. Sir John Strachey took
a leading part in its abolition. To secure the
levy of the duty on salt, he writes, ’there grew
up gradually a monstrous system, to which it would
be almost impossible to find a parallel in any tolerably
civilized country. A Customs line was established
which stretched across the whole of India, which in
1869 extended from the Indus to the Mahanadi in Madras,
a distance of 2,300 miles; and it was guarded by nearly
12,000 men and petty officers, at an annual cost of
L162,000. It would have stretched from London
to Constantinople. . . . It consisted principally
of an immense impenetrable hedge of thorny trees and
bushes . . . A similar line, 280 miles in length,
was maintained in the north-eastern part of the Bombay
Presidency from Dohud to the Runn of Cutch.’
In 1878 the salt duties were revised, and the necessary
arrangements with the native states were made.
With effect from the 1st April, 1879, the whole Customs
line was abolished, with the exception of a small
portion on the Indus. (Sir J. Strachey, The Finances
and Public Works of India, 1869-81, London, 1882,
pp. 219, 220, 225.) Great mines of rock salt are worked
near the Indus.

4. Most people who know India intimately are
of opinion that indirect taxation is more suitable
to the circumstances of the country than direct taxation.
For municipal purposes, indirect taxation, under the
name of octroi, is levied by most considerable towns,
and notwithstanding its inconveniences, is far less
unpopular and far more productive than any form of
direct taxation. The people have been accustomed
to indirect taxation of divers kinds from the most
remote times, and hate income tax or any other direct
impost, however reasonable it may be in theory.
Since 1895 the general customs duty is 5 per cent.
ad valorem on commodities imported into British
India by sea. (See I.G., 1907, vol. iv, chapter
8). The above remarks on the suitability of indirect
taxation for India are not intended as a defence of
the barbarous device of the ‘Customs hedge’,
which was indefensible.